A COMING EVENT.
Thus things went on for the space of about three weeks. Tom went to see
Lucy almost every night, and sometimes stayed late; for his mother was
still from home, and his father was careless about his hours so long
as they were decent. Lucy's face continued grave, but lost a little
of its trouble; for Tom often asked her to sing to him now, and she
thought she was gaining more of the influence over him which she so
honestly wished to possess. As the month drew toward a close, however,
the look of anxiety began to deepen upon her countenance.
One evening, still and sultry, they were together as usual. Lucy was
sitting at the piano, where she had just been singing, and Tom stood
beside her. The evening, as the Italian poets would say, had grown
brown, and Mrs. Boxall was just going to light the candles, when Tom
interposed a request for continued twilight.
"Please, grannie," he said--for he too called her grannie--"do not
light the candles yet. It is so sweet and dusky--just like Lucy here."
"All very well for you," said Mrs. Boxall; "but what is to become of
me? My love-making was over long ago, and I want to see what I'm about
now. Ah! young people, your time will come next. Make hay while the sun
shines."
"While the candle's out, you mean, grannie," said Tom, stealing a kiss
from Lucy.
"I hear more than you think for," said the cheery old woman. "I'll give
you just five minutes' grace, and then I mean to have my own way. I am
not so fond of darkness, I can tell you."
"How close it is!" said Lucy. "Will you open the window a little wider,
Tom. Mind the flowers."
She came near the window, which looked down on the little stony desert
of Guild Court, and sank into a high-backed chair that stood beside it.
"I can hardly drag one foot after another," she said, "I feel so
oppressed and weary."
"And I," said Tom, who had taken his place behind her, leaning on the
back of her chair, "am as happy as if I were in Paradise."
"There must be thunder in the air," said Lucy. "I fancy I smell the
lightning already. Oh, dear!"
"Are you afraid of lightning, then?" asked Thomas.
"I do not think I am exactly; but it shakes me so! I can't explain what
I mean. It affects me like a false tone on the violin. No, that's not
it. I can't tell what it is like."
A fierce flash broke in upon her words. Mrs. Boxall gave a scream.
"The Lord be about us from harm!" she cried.
Lucy sat trembling.
Thomas did not know how much she had to make her tremble. It is
wonderful what can be seen in a single moment under an intense light.
In that one flash Lucy had seen Mr. Molken and another man seated at
a table, casting dice, with the eagerness of hungry fiends upon both
their faces.
A few moments after the first flash, the wind began to rise, and as
flash followed flash, with less and less of an interval, the wind
rose till it blew a hurricane, roaring in the chimney and through the
archway as if it were a wild beast caged in Guild Court, and wanting to
get out.
When the second flash came, Lucy saw that the blind of Mr. Molken's
window was drawn down.
All night long the storm raved about London. Chimney-pots clashed on
the opposite pavements. One crazy old house, and one yet more crazy
new one, were blown down. Even the thieves and burglars retreated to
their dens. But before it had reached its worst Thomas had gone home.
He lay awake for some time listening to the tumult and rejoicing in it,
for it roused his imagination and the delight that comes of beholding
danger from a far-removed safety--a selfish pleasure, and ready to pass
from a sense of our own comfort into a complacent satisfaction in the
suffering of others.
Lucy lay awake for hours. There was no more lightning, but the howling
of the wind tortured her--that is, drew discords from the slackened
strings of the human instrument--her nerves; made "broken music in
her sides." She reaped this benefit, however, that such winds always
drove her to her prayers. On the wings of the wind itself, she hastened
her escape "from the windy storm and tempest." When at last she fell
asleep, it was to dream that another flash of lightning--when or where
appearing she did not know--revealed Thomas casting dice with Molken,
and then left them lapt in the darkness of a godless world. She woke
weeping, fell asleep again, and dreamed that she stood in the darkness
once more, and that somewhere near Thomas was casting dice with the
devil for his soul, but she could neither see him nor cry to him, for
the darkness choked both voice and eyes. Then a hand was laid upon her
head, and she heard the words--not in her ears, but in her heart--"Be
of good cheer, my daughter." It was only a dream; but I doubt if
even--I must not name names, lest I should be interpreted widely from
my meaning--the greatest positivist alive could have helped waking with
some comfort from that dream, nay, could have helped deriving a faint
satisfaction from it, if it happened to return upon him during the day.
"But in no such man would such a dream arise," my reader may object.
"Ah, well," I answer, because I have nothing more to say. And perhaps
even in what I have written I may have been doing or hinting some wrong
to some of the class. It is dreadfully difficult to be just. It is far
easier to be kind than to be fair.
It was not in London or the Empire only that that storm raged that
night. From all points of the compass came reports of its havoc.
Whether it was the same storm, however, or another on the same night, I
cannot tell; but on the next morning save one, a vessel passing one of
the rocky islets belonging to the Cape Verde group, found the fragments
of a wreck floating on the water. The bark had parted amidships, for,
on sending a boat to the island, they found her stem lying on a reef,
round which little innocent waves were talking like human children. And
on her stem they read her name, _Ningpo, London_. On the narrow strand
they found three bodies: one, that of a young woman, vestureless and
broken. They buried them as they could.